A federal grand jury is investigating the founders of Squiggles NFT for fraud and money laundering. This comes one year after the project was removed from OpenSea due to questionable claims. The investigation was made public for the first time by Twitter user @tier10k. A court filing legitimized the investigation.
The Squiggels NFT project has been under close observation for the majority of the past year. After it was removed from OpenSea, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) received a 57-page investigative report.
Squiggles NFT is investigated for cases of fraud and money laundering
According to the document shared today, the founders of Squiggles NFT will be investigated by a federal grand jury. According to the court document, the investigation focuses on potential “violations of federal criminal law.” In addition, the complaint named Gavin Mayo, Gabriel Hay, and Ali Saghi as accused parties.
Filing showed that the government investigation is also focused on violations of Title 18, Sections 1343 and 1957. These two claim that the listed founders have committed fraud and possibly engaged in money laundering.
The filing then states that the listed founders “are suspected of creating multiple Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) rug pull scams that defrauded investors of millions of dollars in various cryptocurrencies.” According to the report, the group “is believed to have helped move and trade cryptocurrencies to conceal them from authorities.”
In the end, the filing states that the founders used “providers such as Meta Platforms, Inc., particularly Instagram, to promote and mint their fraudulent NFT projects.” In the end, the accusations and investigations all revolve around allegations of carpet-pulling that surfaced for the first time in February 2022.
